Resolved Need to decide between two laptops

Our laptop died in Maui. We drove over to Costco to pick up an inexpensive replacement... basically for travel and for some work around the home (we already have desktops). It doesn't have to be a game machine... just a reliable, easy-to-read computer for us both. The two being offered by Costco were 15.6 inch.

HP DV6 - 3123CL (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2366968,00.asp) Not quite what Costco is offering but very close.

Gateway - NV59CO9u (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2364413,00.asp)

Both are Win7 Home Premium 64 bit

Both are equally priced.

I'm inclined towards the Gateway but frankly, I need some input. Soon. Thanks.

 

I have 2 HP Pavillon laptops. Dv4-2167sb for my small business and DV6tse 3000 CTO Customizable Notebook PC for personal use. Love them both. I like the HP myself. Never had a problem with either notebook. But to be fair I've never used a Gateway

 

What kind of travel? Busy, frequent, business-type travel, or occasional leisurely travel? I ask because you also said "easy-to-read " a 15.6" display, regardless how sharp and crisp the monitor, may not be that easy to read.

If this will be used mostly around the house, where a couple extra pounds and bulkier dimensions don't really matter, I would get a nice 17" notebook. And while my first PC was a Gateway and it served me well, that was nearly 20 years ago and Gateway is not the company it used to be. Gateway and eMachines are now owned by Acer, and I would expect they have many parts in common. That said, they all have 1 year warranties.

If I only could choose between those two options, I too would get the HP, not only because I think the brand represents better quality, but also because the i5 is a faster CPU than the i3.

Dell makes good notebooks but I must add I've been very happy with my Toshiba a505-s6009 with its i3 330.

Note sure the worth (because I frequently question PCMag's reporting and reviews) but you might want to look at this: http://www.pcmag.com/image_popup/0,1871,iid=242801,00.asp

 

Thanks, Guys. I sincerely appreciate the input. We talked it over and decided to go with the HP. The reason we narrowed it down to these two is that Costco have a very liberal return policy. In addition, we've had HP desktops in the past and both served us well. We won't be making extensive use of this laptop since we have Dell desktops at home (only two years old) and the laptop will only be used for occasional travel as well as some computing in and around the kitchen periodically.

 

Okay... here's the full story. Recently we were on vacation and took my wife's Dell laptop (XPS m1330) with us. It died after a few days. The screen just went black then a bunch of lines appeared running vertically then it went all white. We turned it off (had to hard shut it off) and then tried again... same thing. A few days later we turned it on and it appeared to work for a short time (a few minutes really) before the exact same thing occurred.

We're home now and looking at replacing it. Today my wife turned the Dell on again and low and behold it fired up (on battery.. not connected to the AC which come to think of it, we had it connected to an AC outlet on the trip). Anyway... we both noticed that the fan was not making a noise so it is probably not running.

The problem is... the XPS while a great laptop is an older laptop and I hate to pour money into it when new laptops with newer technology is available.